A couple of weekends ago the comic strip Betty had a full panel on a
character going to a garage sale. She started off the night before by
making sure the batteries were fully charged on her cell phone, and
then she went to the sale the next day and selected 3 items off a
table. She then gave the seller a dollar to hold them for her for an
hour and went off back to a corner of the table where she stood playing
with her cell phone. After that she went back to the seller and bought
the items and later commented to her friend that she had made a profit
of $40 on her cheap purchases and how "picture phones" and "online
auctions" had changed the way she went garage saling.
My questions are, do such phones exist where you can buy local hourly
www browsing capacity from your provider or cell phone company, and if
so, what companies offer this service? (I've never heard of any so
far.) I know people can use their
pda's to access hotspots, but I
thought that was the luck of the draw- finding a reliable hotspot
wherever you might be at a given time, and I assume it's only text
based.
Also, in the comic strip, the lady asks the seller to hold the 3 items
for an hour while she supposedly checked eBay or some similar site.
But, why would she need an hour to check on a few items? (or is it
because the speed of the connection on these phones are extremely slow,
making web browsing difficult?)
I don't have a phone with picture capacity, just the basic kind for
phoning in an emergency, but if the scenario in the comic is true, you
would expect to see people in the aisles of Value Village and other
thrift stores, or even regular retail stores with their picture phones
in hand. Or was this comic strip just stretching the truth?
Linear Mode
